We built a WordPress AI chatbot that runs on your own API key
Most visitors leave a website because they cannot find one answer. 24/7 Assistant is our WordPress AI chatbot for closing that gap. A chatbot you install from a ZIP file, point at ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini with your own key, and have answering questions in an afternoon.
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Why add a WordPress AI chatbot
A website answers the questions its designer anticipated. Visitors arrive with the ones they did not. They want to know whether you cover their area, what a project costs roughly, how long it takes, whether you have done this for a business like theirs. The answer is usually somewhere on the site, three pages deep, in a paragraph nobody scrolls to.
Most of them will not hunt for it. They leave, and the visit reads in analytics as a bounce rather than as the question it actually was. A WordPress AI chatbot is not a gimmick bolted onto that problem, it is a second way through the same content: ask, get the answer, keep going.
A chatbot does not replace your pages. It gives the visitor who was about to leave one more chance to find what those pages already say.
What that changes, in practice:
- Common questions get answered at the moment they are asked, not in an email the next morning.
- Services get explained in the visitor’s own words rather than yours.
- People who are ready to talk reach your contact form faster.
- The enquiries that do arrive are better qualified, because the basics are already settled.
What 24/7 Assistant is
24/7 Assistant is a WordPress AI chatbot plugin. It installs from a ZIP file the way any other plugin does, and once it is active a chat launcher appears on your site. Visitors open it, ask a question in plain language, and get an answer drawn from what you have told it about your business.
There is no external dashboard to log into and no separate account to manage. The settings live in WordPress, next to everything else you administer.
It runs on your own API key
This is the part that matters most and it is the decision most chatbot products take away from you. 24/7 Assistant does not resell you tokens through a subscription. You bring an API key from the provider you prefer, and the plugin uses it.
ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, whichever you already have a key for or whichever answers your kind of question best. You can change your mind later without changing plugin. Your costs are your provider’s costs, visible in your provider’s billing, and the plugin tracks your remaining credit so a conversation never stops without warning.
Why this is the right way round
When the chatbot vendor owns the model access, your running cost, your rate limits and your data path are all decided by them. When you own the key, switching provider is a settings change, and the only thing you depend on the plugin for is the interface.
Teaching it about your business
A general model knows about the world. It does not know your prices, your service area or the way you like things phrased. Your WordPress AI chatbot takes a knowledge base so it can:
- Read TXT and PDF files you upload, service sheets, price lists, FAQs, anything you already have written down.
- Read a Google Docs link, which is the easier route if the content changes often and you would rather edit in one place.
- Follow behaviour rules: professional or friendly, short answers or long ones, plus any custom rule you want to add.
You can also set starter questions, so the chat window opens with three or four things people actually ask instead of a blank prompt. It is a small detail that noticeably changes how many visitors say anything at all.
When it does not know
A fallback email address catches the cases the assistant cannot answer, so an unanswered question becomes a message to you rather than a dead end. Visitors can also download the conversation if you enable it, which is useful when someone is comparing suppliers and wants to keep what you told them.
Installing the WordPress AI chatbot
No code, and no developer. Download the WordPress AI chatbot, then:
- Upload the ZIP in your WordPress dashboard, under Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin.
- Activate it.
- Paste in your API key and adjust the settings: brand name, brand colour, starter questions, behaviour.
- Add your knowledge base files and save.
The free version needs no licence key at all, so there is nothing to buy before you find out whether the thing is any good on your site.
Who it suits
The pattern is simple: if you answer the same handful of questions over and over, a WordPress AI chatbot pays for itself in attention you get back. That tends to mean:
- Service businesses and local companies
- Web design agencies and consultants
- Coaches and support-based websites
- Real estate, travel and transfer services
- Small business websites generally
A WordPress AI chatbot suits a site with something to explain. A pure brochure page with three sentences on it has nothing for an assistant to work with.
Free and Pro
The free version is a real version, not a trial that expires. It gives you 100 messages a month, your choice of ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, a custom brand name and colour in the chat header, the full knowledge base including PDF, TXT and Google Docs, behaviour rules, starter questions, a fallback email, credit tracking with a low balance alert, and a usage chart so you can see how close to the limit you are.
Pro is for sites where the WordPress AI chatbot has become part of how enquiries arrive. It removes the monthly message limit and adds the things a business needs once conversations matter:
- Your own logo in the chat header, and the “Powered by emptykay.com” branding removed.
- Lead capture before the chat starts, collecting name, email, phone and company, with a headline you write.
- Email notification when a conversation starts, and the full transcript when it ends, to any address you choose.
- An analytics dashboard for leads captured, total conversations and average messages per chat, viewable by month, three months, six months or year.
Which one to start on
Start free. A hundred messages is enough to learn whether visitors on your site use a chatbot and what they ask it. If the answer is yes, the transcripts alone will tell you what to fix in your copy, and Pro will be an easy decision.
Where to start
Install the free version, give it your best two or three documents, and read the first fifty conversations. They are the most honest user research you will get about your own website: the questions people ask a WordPress AI chatbot are exactly the ones your pages failed to answer.
If you would rather we set it up with you, including the knowledge base and the behavior rules, that is something we do as part of a build or on its own.
Want it running on your site?
Download the plugin, or ask us to set it up with your content and rules.
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